Monday, May 9, 2011

or~ Stories from our Early Daze in EVE This is one of a series of Stories from the early days of our corp… This one is about our first, and so far only, WarDec.

I had joined the game after my son AI showed it to me. Initially I did the tutorials then I dicked around in low 0.5 systems solo ratting and just mucking about on my own... finally in late Jan of 2011, AI,SL and I setup HB our very own corporation.

Now basically, and if you have been reading any of my blog you already know this but I feel our corp at that time basically followed a business model I feel is best described as Bunch-a-Boobs… We were doing the 3Ms… Missioning, Mining and Mucking about trying to make some I$K and we didn’t really have a master plan or any real set goals.

When I joined, AI & SL had been ingame about a year, long enough to have been in a corp, done some lowsec roams, SL seemed to be skilling up for Industry and was very interested in manufacturing and he BADLY wanted us to have a POS. AI also wanted a POS, was more interested in management, wanted to be the CEO of our corp, which was fine w/ me and SL… SL didn’t want the headaches and TBH I didn’t either… yet. I did take the 2nd in command spot as VP in charge of Public Relations and the Director of Salvage Operations.

I liked the idea of that title, “Public Relations VP” very much from the character of “Jayne Cobb” from the, very sadly very shortly lived SF series, “Firefly” (if you don’t know about this show you should, "Firefly"… and if you do, ‘nough said), Jayne was quite simply a ‘heavy’… you know, the ‘tough guy’ type…. the strong, silent, very deadly type… but the also extremely dumb… type. When Mal Reynolds, the Capt. of the tramp freighter “Serenity” was asked what Jayne’s job was on the ship, he thought about it and answered, ‘Public Relations’… Jayne’s job was to bully, beat up and kill people.

Anyhoo… so here were, ratting, running missions, mining, all of us skilling up our toons trying to get into the next class of ship. We had a few guys join us… Tif, and Cap (and though Cap is still a member, he has been AFK for a few months now… we wonder what happened we do), Kow joined us next and then, one fine day…

We receive an unsolicited request for membership from a “Tonto”… and like 10 minutes later, we get a War Declaration Notice (WarDec) from CONCORD! SL and I had been looking at this “Tonto” guy who was asking to join our corp when that hit us and we accepted him right away saying how we were gonna need people now that we were at War.

I must admit, my initial gut reaction was something the same… but all I can say now is that at the time it felt, I don’t know… hinky… something not right… but we were like a bee hive that got kicked… all aswarm and abuzz about getting WarDec’ed… Why? Who was it? Why?? How many are there? WHY??? Did you kill one of em? NO! Did you? NO! WHY??? I gotta tell you, the first time for anything is always, well the first time you know? But this was really outta-the-blue for us. Then we get contacted by the CEO of the corp what dec’ed us… It’s easy… Pay 150M I$K, and he’ll go away...Ohhhhhhhhh… So that’s what this is all about! We’re a NOOB CORP and therefore an easy target and they is an official Pirate corp, this being of course, one of the main careers in EVE… This one is a Noob Griefer corp specifically, pirates who prey on new characters and corps as what don’t have the skills and ships to effectively fight back and who aren’t in an Alliance and therefore are easy targets for more skilled and experienced pilots, EVE Mafia style. Well… that took a load off lemme tell you. We were worried it was like, personal or something, you know. Anyhoo…

Well, that made our reply very easy… “Thanx, but shall not be partaking in your EVE protection racket.” The response was as expected, “Well, in 24 hours, enjoy your $15 per month screen saver.” You see from the time, actually the moment, a WarDec is started, IE “bought” (for 2 Million I$K per week) you have 24 hours from then until it goes ‘live’, IE the War Dec prosecuting corp or Alliance can attack the defending corp/Alliance membership anywhere in EVE. This also means the defending corp/Alliance membership can, conversely, also attack the prosecuting corp/Alliance membership anywhere in EVE without any CONCORD intervention as they are legally ‘at War’.

So we spent an interesting 24 hours to say the least. Lots of discussion about what to do when you get War Dec'ed. IE, how to defend, how this will affect our gameplay, no 3M’s now, will we lose? If we do lose, IE if the prosecuting corp is able to keep us from profitably Mining, Missioning and Mucking about so that we won’t be able to make I$K to pay the bills and replace the ships, what do we do then? Even at a year plus neither AI or SL were what you would call ‘highly’ experienced PvP’ers and god knows the others of us weren’t. We didn’t have a war chest in the corp wallet and we had all been putting our I$K back into ships for ourselves as we skilled up, so the corp wallet was… well, in a word, we were poor. So, while I know my guys, and I know they will get in there and give it their best fight, the overall expectation was not highly favorable as I saw it.

Plus I had some concerns about our newest member, “Tanto”… he seemed perfectly OK with us being in a war right as he joined, he wasn’t ‘around’ much, IE he didn’t join in the discussion on the dec and ‘huddle up’ with us you might call it… he actually went off to go do ‘some things he had to take care of’… Little did we know it but he went out and got our corp its first officially recorded “kill”… He went off and got into some PvP. As that first day wore on AI and I called and talked a few times I got more and more convinced that we shouldn’t have accepted “Tonto” so quickly… I was very concerned he was an Alt and an enemy spy.

AI and I finally agreed to kick “Tonto” from the corp for the duration of the War Dec. IF he was a real noob, maybe he’d come back after, but I simply felt we couldn’t take the chance he wasn’t a spy. As Public Relations VP it was my job to write up a letter of membership termination in which I said we were not in a favorable position to integrate a new member into the corp due to the Wardec, and then we ‘gently’ kicked him from the corp.

The next day, just before the Wardec went “live” we were contacted and got one more chance to ‘pay up or else…’ Again, “So sorry, but nope.” And lo and behold a bit later, 24 hours on the dot after the WarDec was declared, Tif calls out in chat “They’re insystem!” SL and I were in our home station, the SOE Station in Soshin. We check local and sure enough, one of the dec’ing corps guys is insystem and lands right outside our station. SL is hot to go out and get this guy, at the time SL had been primarily flying a Rokh a very impressive Battleship, I was flying a Thrasher (Destroyer class), and Tif was in his Exequror (a heavy cargo Cruiser) none of the other members of our corp were OL at the time.

So… here it is, nothing to it but to do it. SL coordinates with Tif to warp to the station and he and I time our undock to coincide with Tif’s landing at the station… the griefer, a corp member we had not seen until now named “Oz”,was in an Ishtar (Tech II Crusier) We all lock up him as he locks up us and we all go to it. He releases his Ogre II’s and attacks. I engage him with my Thrasher orbiting at 1000m with all 7 of my 280mm Howitzer’s in volley fire, Tif’s Exequror is running 250mm railguns, and SL’s Rokh was firing Cruise Missiles and 250mm Gauss guns...

Tif’s Exequror was the first ship lost, my Thrasher was next ship to be asploded, but right before I was killed I saw that we were getting into him pretty good and SL was still out there in his Rokh, so I docked in my pod and jumped in my Rifter and immediately undocked to re-engage. SL calls out that he is going down and once the Rohk was gone, well, to put it simply my Rifter was instapopped and I get Pod killed immediately after…

System: Soshin - 2011.01.29

Agressor: Oz / Ship: Ishtar / Primary Weapon: Ogre II

===========================================

Victim: Tif / Destroyed: Exequror

Victim: TurAmarth / Destroyed: Thrasher

Victim: SL / Destroyed: Rokh

Victim: TurAmarth / Destroyed: Rifter

Victim: TurAmarth / Destroyed: Pod

In other words, we lost. We lost bad. We lost every ship we put in the field against one Tech II Cruiser and one of us, me, got podkilled… SL logged off immediately and I believe so did Tif. I woke up in my clone back in my noob system many, many jumps away. Crap. Crap, crap, crap, crap… Oh well, its EVE right? You want a safe, nice cuddly cozy game… go play WoW.

Now comes the weird EVE part…

A few minutes after that action was over I was contacted by the griefer who killed us all. Initially the convo went as one might expect…

Oz > hello

﻿TurAmarth > yes

﻿Oz > you do realize that this isn’t what we want right?

﻿TurAmarth > well... not gettin what you want anymore than we are. So it's at least fair. And if you really meant that... simply stop.... but you won’t... right?

﻿Oz > not until we get what we want

﻿Oz > however

﻿Oz > aside from this 'situation' for a moment

﻿TurAmarth > well... then that's that... cause you aren't anymore than we are...

﻿TurAmarth > we have no situation.... ya'll are playing EVE mafia... and we aren't going for it.

﻿Oz > fair enough

﻿Oz > hope you enjoy your game for the next couple of months

﻿Oz > good day

﻿TurAmarth > I will.... you too....

Now… as you can expect while I was not a happy camper, I was not as upset and some get in these situations… It IS a game after all and we PAY for the privilege of playing. I once read something a guy wrote in his blog that has stuck with me ever since:

“When something bad happens to you in EVE, remember to smile and say, ‘Thank you CCP, May I have another?”

After cooling off a bit I was going back over everything and I realized Oz had at one point said, “…aside from this 'situation' for a moment” which I had not really ‘caught’ when he first posted it… So I convo’ed him and asked what it was he wanted to say “…aside from this situation…”? He responded, “Oh yes... I was going to say, aside from this whole war thing. That was a damn good showing... seriously.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Turns out we had him nearly on the ropes… he told me he was approx 3 seconds from losing his stability. We talked for a bit about how the fight went in general then he said, “And also, you guys showed some real cohesion too, very organized.” “You did well, I was seriously contemplating leaving.” Well… I was starting to feel a little better about getting our collective asses handed to us. We talked on a bit and I told him a little about us, how the CEO is my RL son and an active duty Marine etc., etc., and suddenly Oz says, “Tell U what, since you are being so cool about this I will retract this war.” “Besides, lol, next time we meet you will likely win, it’s just me against all U guys, I’m a one man corp!.”

I was stunned… I LOL’ed and told him, Oh BTW, one thing he didn’t know was… we have no money… maybe 10M I$K in the corp account… we couldn’t have paid if we had wanted to! Then he then offered to help us out with that!! At 03:30 he had stated he would not stop until he got what he wanted… at 04:30 he offered US I$K to help out with our losses and just in general… I turned him down, of course, we are small yet proud corp, I did ask, “…however... if we are ever wardec'ed... can we call ya?” Oz immediately responded, “Yes, and I will come.” Go figger huh, this is ONE VERY WEIRD GAME! He also told me that he WAS “Tonto” I was rocked that my instincts were right on that one, we both lol’ed over that quite a bit.

Now at this time I had been ingame only one month, and what he said next absolutely floored me… “Where did U learn to fit your ship? U in particular…” “Your fits are advanced and correct.” We only saw his alts before the actual action outside of SOE Station in Soshin. Directly after the fight, I looked up “Oz” on Battleclinic… very impressive killrecord, so needless to say I was really quite pleased to hear such praise from such an experienced PvP’er. I told him I was one of the types who read EVERYTHING… I Google every little thing I get involved in or even hear about ingame. I had started working with EFT and moved on to PYFA for fit testing. His response was, “Aha!” “That’s the best thing you can do, keep doing that, it shows.” I and my corp had just been buggered hard and but good publicly outside of our home station… and here I was feeling good about myself.

﻿I told Oz about the first time I got podkilled… “The first guy who podded me was sorry he did so when he saw just how noob I was.... he returned all the loot & salvage from my ship and bought me a replacement Rifter... I am finding much to like in the honorable scumbags of EVE... =]”

﻿

And so it was that we weathered our first WarDec, met a strangely honorable pirate and made a friend I hope we will be flying with for years to come. It turns out that we, simply by showing up and giving it our all, earned his respect and admiration so as of 2011.02.29 at 05:35 we were no longer at war.

An additional note,

The fight was, of course, very public taking place as it did outside of a major popular station. I was contacted by Dro, the CEO of a small missioning and wormhole corp, who had seen the whole thing… and he had brought 4 members of his corp down to Soshin and wanted to know if we would accept their assistance? They were also very impressed with our ‘moxie’ (I’m not gonna link that one, if ya don’t get it, google it yerself!) and wanted to know if we might be interested in joining their corp…

This is the strangest game I have ever played. We come out to do battle with one guy in a Tec II Cruiser and get 4 ships, one of em a Rokh, blown the hell away… and we get street cred. We get people convo’in us with things like, “good show”, and offers of assistance and the guy who dec’ed us offers us I$K and friendship simply because we came out and fought back… how strange is that?I love this game... Fly Safe and See you in the Sky... =/|)=

Monday, May 2, 2011

Our Alliance has experienced a sudden and quite large surge in overall membership, abilities, assets, etc. with the addition of not only our corp, but 8 other corps in the last 2 months. We are, obviously, going through some real changes, all good for the Alliance… Oh of course we also get the politics etc., that come with the increased number of members and member corps, but the good far outweighs any cons to this growth.

So, here we are with all kinds of new people, with a wide range of skills from pure noobs to very experienced null-sec PvPers. We now have a WH training coordinator, we are planning and scheduling PvP Tournaments, Alliance low and null-sec fleet ops, the whole she-bang.

The Alliance has access to 2 wormholes, the Alliance executor’s corp has a C1 with a hi-sec static entry and we also have a C2 WH that belongs to a member corp w/ a static low-sec entry.

The C1 is used for Alliance training. We train up Alliance members on WH scanning, security, PvP, defensive practices. They are introduced to the POS and how it works, defensive and offensive capabilities. Running Sleeper, Ladar and Radar sites, mining Gas and Roids sites, PI (Planetary Interaction), overall Standards of Practice when in wspace and all things WH in general.

The C2 is the ‘home’ of a member corp and therefore, it is available for Alliance membership use but, of course, under the owning corp’s rules as the sites, etc. are the bread & butter of that corp and have to be managed as such.

Now on to the story of the evening…

We had 6 sleeper sites and a Ladar site pop in the Alliance C1 WH, and Tif requested/assigned Kow and I run to them. So we fleet up, Tif has them all BM’ed and will be handling all Loot & Salvage ops with his Noctis. We go in and take down the first few sites, calling in Tif for L&S, now at this point Kow decided he needs to go AFK for a bit of RL time w/ his TV so I decide to continue solo.

My Drake is well fit for Sleepers, the only issue was that it will obviously take a bit longer solo than it would w/ more DPS. Well, I work through another site no issues, call in Tif, he starts nom nom’ing the wrecks with the Noctis and sends me off to the next site whereupon what do I do but immediately pop the ‘trigger’ NPC that brings on the 2nd spawn... Oh Great Crap! Anyhoo… nuthin to it but to do it right?

Now, for the very 1st time since I first solo’ed a Line site, I… (a) lose all 5 Warrior drones to a very sudden aggro switch from most all of the NPC’s which basically instapops ALL my drones and then they immediately switch ALL aggro back to me and (2) I find my tank going below 50% (also for the 1st time since I first solo’ed a Line site)… Damn, damn, damn… So I warp back to the Relay point then into the POS, head over to the Ship Maint Bay, drop 5 drones in my drone bay, move 1000 Scourge Heavy missiles from a can in the hold to the hold proper, and ensure that all 6 launchers are fully loaded, all of which gives my shields time to tank back up to full… well, 95% but close enough and, so… Hi Ho, Hi Ho, its back to work I go…

Now all the while I am of course logged onto our TS3 server on audio w/ them as what are on and my ally Sov who has been listening and commenting, to my chagrin, to the play by play of my ‘Desparate Fight Against the Nefarious Naptime Forces Ranged Against Me’… he decides to join me and help out as does my corpie SL… shiney. Sov shows up, Tif fleets and warps him to me… and now we start making quick work of the sleepy RED guys.

Then suddenly, as is always the case…

“[01:37:21 ] Tif > a hostile drake jumped into the hole”,

“[01:38:08 ] Sov > hostiles in WH - drake, rapier”,

“[01:39:16 ] Tif > slamming on tura”,

“[01:39:19 ] Tra > call to arms”,

“﻿[01:39:31 ] Kiy > fleet me plz”…

Now for them as don’t know, the above are edited chat logs…

Tif calls out that an unknown, non-alliance, non-corp IE UNFRIENDLY Drake has appeared on his dscan inside the WH;

Sov, verifies this report and adds the Rapier he sees on dscan;

Tif reports I am under attack;

Tra send out the call to arms for an armed response to an attack on an Alliance member;

Kiy makes request to join the fleet we are in for the site running, in order to respond and bring in more pilots…

As you can see, this takes exactly 00:02:10 from 1st warning to 1st response from the membership to begin ships moving to my rescue. There is NO better feeling in this ‘verse than can be expressed by what those few lines of chat represent.

Now as to what was “happening” in those scant 2 minutes and 10 seconds and the minutes that followed…

My Drake was targeted and scrammed, both ships opened fire and engaged their drones against me;SL, a corpie of mine, had just warped into the hole with Tif and immediately warped in his Carical to assist me;

I targeted and engaged the Drake w/ missiles but no drones as I was out;

When SL arrived on the field he immediately engaged the Rapier and the Drake engaged him - SL's Carical was lost during this short engagement, SL warped to safety in his pod;Sov coordinated the response by a total of 6 pilots from 3 Alliance corps;The Drake re-engaged me;

I kept up a running action report… I was in a drone swarm and taking fire from both ships but I was tanking the total incoming DPS just fine, not going under 75% shields;

The Drake I was engaged with was actually down to 50% shields, as I had not targeted the Rapier I did not known his status ATM;

As soon as my Allies were together they fleet warped to me and engaged both ships;

As soon as the raiders saw my allies enter the field and the balance of the fight swing away from them… The Rapier warped out and exited the field;

The Drake, now scrammed and unable to warp out, was quickly and efficiently terminated;

The Drake’s pod escaped.

The Carical was lost at 01:41:00 and the Drake was killed at 01:43:00, the total engagement took 5 and 1/2 minutes.

I don’t, of course, have chat logs for the fights as we use TS3 voice comms during all PvP and most PvE actions. But I am extremely pleased to say the professionalism and coordination exhibited by my Alliance members was first rate. That my ship, and I, were ‘saved’ during the course of the action, is of course, of high ‘emotional’ value to me personally, but evaluated tactically, the loss of a Drake and the successful defense of the Alliance WH set against the loss of a Carical is the true “win” here.

WH Raiders:

Pilot Ship Corp Notes

Zoe Drake CtI Killed/not podded

? Rapier ? Escaped

Alliance Response Team:

Pilot Ship Corp Notes

Tur Drake HB primaried in attack

Kiy Tengu UC Credited w/ the Drake Kill

Dar Tengu UC

SL Carical HB secondaried in attack / killed

Sov Cane HP

Kow Mrym DS arrived just after action

At [01:52:31] Kiy posted the killmail for the Drake…

We posted a pilot on combat patrol at the hole, L&S the Drake and Caracal, swept the system for pods or other ships, the system came up clean, with the understanding that a cloaky ‘something’ could always be in there… We stayed on Condition Yellow for a while but in the final analysis it was agreed that it was by far most likely a WH ‘Raid’, fast and dirty, looking for some PvP kills… only with our newly strengthened Alliance this raid met fast, coordinated and determined resistance and was, overall, a loss for the raiding corp. We dropped back to std security procedures and resumed normal WH operations.

To say we felt good is a major understatement, especially when the Alliance VP came online and, once updated on the action, he was very, very pleased. I, having been in a situation where, without corp and Alliance support, I was (probably) a dead man… was thrilled. Just hearing that help was on OTW without a seconds hesitation… man what a good feeling. =]

Them as what follow me...

Graphiti...

Round and round we go...

Fav Post Bytes...

"Maybe we're not that different after all and I have my own reality to get to grips with."Absence of Substance

Now THAT is wisdom...

We are, each and alone, the absolute center of our subjective 'verse... this is the way of life.To see another's POV as if it were your own... this is the way of truth...To allow that some others have POVs you cannot and will never understand, and yet accept them as they are, this is the way of acceptance...To kill them all without rancor or anger, but in brotherhood... this is the way of EVE.

This Is What We DO!!!

POD Locked

We're Soooo Bad at Hisec!

New Odysseyt Wormhole Jump Animations

EVE Forever, the Second Decade

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